


Our Love Comes Back

by Noccalula



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Bucky Barnes Feels, But It's Still There, Confessions, F/M, Light Sexual Content, M/M, One Shot, Other, POV First Person, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve Feels, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers-centric, Stucky - Freeform, Yes that says 'light'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 06:25:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5994786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noccalula/pseuds/Noccalula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I heard that noise, like the faintest scrape of glass on metal, and I knew someone was about to come through my bedroom window. I was prepared for a full-on onslaught, maybe a whole team of guys, rogue Hydra agents, whatever. My hand went straight to the lamp – any port in a storm – and I was getting ready to throw it when I realized that it was too quiet to be more than one person, too careful to be anyone but Natasha. Don’t get me wrong, most guys wouldn’t have a problem with Nat climbing in their bedroom window five til midnight, but all I felt was confused. The pane opened, the curtains moved in the cold air that came filtering in, the blinds made that little shimmery noise that blinds make. I sat up. I waited to see red hair.</i>
</p>
<p>  <i>There was a glint of silver and Bucky moved the curtain away from him. There he was, standing like a specter in my ugly, blank new bedroom. Just standing there, like I hadn’t just gone to Prague and back trying to track him down, like I wasn’t getting ready to go to Hamburg the next day to follow up on a lead. Like he’d been hanging out down the street the entire time.</i></p>
<p>Steve Rogers, emotionally exhausted and desperate for help, makes a confession.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Love Comes Back

**Author's Note:**

> I hate first person. Hate it. Despise it. But Steve demanded it. 
> 
> This piece was heavily, heavily inspired by the James Blake song of the same title, which can be enjoyed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFSk0BYJDLk
> 
> Stucky is the MCU Ship nearest and dearest to my heart, so please enjoy some painful, emotional Steve Rogers. It's not as explicit as I normally like to get - y'all know how I roll - but this piece didn't call for anything overt (there will be graphic, graphic Stucky in the future in other pieces, promise). 
> 
> (I should also probably mention that all of my work save Salacious takes place in the same universe - this is part of Church Bells, Sam Wilson Isn't Getting Paid Enough For This Shit, any any forthcoming MCU/616 related works.)
> 
> As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read this! (Hi Kyran!)
> 
> Also, my friend Shaun wrote a response to this piece here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/6004444
> 
> Forgive me I'm an old person who copy/pastes instead of hyper links.

He comes to me at night, like a stray cat that’s learned which windowsill the food is on. Never before eleven, but if one am rolls around and there hasn’t been a single sound at the glass, I know I can finally go to sleep.

  


The first time it happened, I was certain I was dreaming. Sam and I had spent days, weeks even, out on Bucky’s trail trying desperately to find any clue that he was still nearby. Now I know it was a carefully laid distraction, an expert liar’s lie that lead us to Prague and back before we realized we’d been duped and that it was back to the drawing board. I’m not an impatient person. I don’t disappoint easily, I like to think, but I was heartbroken. He pulled me from the Potomac, saved my life, looked into my face and then left again, vanishing back into the ether like it had never happened at all.

  


I couldn’t wrap my brain around that last part. Laying there in the hospital bed with only Marvin Gaye to keep me company at night, visiting hours long since passed and Sam keeping a careful watch in the parking lot, I tried my best to imagine any circumstance in which I could see Bucky Barnes, know he was alive, and then voluntarily leave his side. It would have taken heaven, hell and the armies besides to drag me away. Wild horses. Nothing short of the apocalypse. But he left. He saw me, and he still left.

  


It was a similar train of thought I was on that first night, laying on my back and watching the fan blades rotate at a pace so lazy it bordered on maddening, the streetlights coming through the blind slats in this new apartment that I didn’t so much dislike as completely fail to think about at all. The old one was nice before Bucky put a slug through the wall and Nick Fury simultaneously. Thanks, Buck. Now I know my neighbors were SHIELD, I was laboring under a lie and everything I thought I had built a new life around was false. I half felt gratitude that his actions had shown me the light, half resented the fact that the careful, delicate illusion had been shattered. I never did believe that ignorance was bliss until after I couldn’t be ignorant anymore.

  


Now I believe it. Situationally. I think.

  


 I’m sorry, I’m rambling to you now. Starting to sound like Stark, just less… I dunno. Stark-like.

  


I heard that noise, like the faintest scrape of glass on metal, and I knew someone was about to come through my bedroom window. I was prepared for a full-on onslaught, maybe a whole team of guys, rogue Hydra agents, whatever. My hand went straight to the lamp – any port in a storm – and I was getting ready to throw it when I realized that it was too quiet to be more than one person, too careful to be anyone but Natasha. Don’t get me wrong, most guys wouldn’t have a problem with Nat climbing in their bedroom window five til midnight, but all I felt was confused. The pane opened, the curtains moved in the cold air that came filtering in, the blinds made that little shimmery noise that blinds make. I sat up. I waited to see red hair.

  


There was a glint of silver and Bucky moved the curtain away from him. There he was, standing like a specter in my ugly, blank new bedroom. Just standing there, like I hadn’t just gone to Prague and back trying to track him down, like I wasn’t getting ready to go to Hamburg the next day to follow up on a lead. Like he’d been hanging out down the street the entire time.

  


I wish I could tell you exactly how it felt in some concise way. I was shocked, and then I was furious, and then I was relieved – I think the relief flooded everything else out. He was alive, he looked as okay as he could under the circumstances. He was wearing a black t-shirt, plain cargo pants, a faded hoodie, a blue ball cap. Homeless shelter clothing, generic brands poorly fitted to his frame. He was somewhere between five o’clock shadow and burgeoning beard. He looked haunted, like the dark bags under his eyes came with their own personal demons, but the minute those blue eyes hit mine it was like my heart hit my throat and my stomach hit absolute zero.

  


I wish I could tell you I said something really profound. I think I just said his name, half in a gasp and half in a whisper, sitting up in a tangle of blue gray sheets. I wish I could tell you he said anything to me at all. He didn’t.

  


There was that long, frozen moment and then he was crossing the room with purpose, with power and I was so sure for a second that this was the end, he had finally come back to kill me.

  


I wish I could tell you I was ready to fight him off. I wasn’t. I stood up without thinking and I knew that no matter what he was about to bring to me, I was going to embrace him. He could have put a knife right into my heart and I’d have died with my arms around him.

  


That’s pathetic, isn’t it? It feels pathetic. It’s my judgment, not yours, I know.

  


He didn’t stab me or hit me or attack me. He kissed me. We collided somewhere near the edge of my bed and then he was warm and real and insistent, pressed up against me with his flesh hand on the back of my neck like this was second nature. I was so sure I was dreaming up until that point but my heart was hammering so loud in my ears that I still remember the sound of the rushing of my blood, how it drowned out absolutely everything else except the sensation. He smelled like generic soap and laundry detergent. He tasted like cheap beer – liquid courage. His beard burned against my skin but it felt amazing, felt like being alive after sleeping in ice for seventy years. I feel like the last parts of me that were still sleeping woke up the minute his lips hit mine.

  


…I’m sorry, that’s cheesy. I wish I had the right words. I never do.

  


Anyway, when I tasted beer I pulled away to look him in the eyes, to be sure he wasn’t too drunk to know what he was doing but he didn’t look drunk at all, just sad. Deeply, horribly sad. Buck always had sad eyes, they charmed the guys and gals right and left back in the day, but it wasn’t just some cute down-turned hound dog look anymore. War haunts faces. Death and destruction and cruelty, they change the way you look. Change the damn way your nose sits on your face, you see enough of it. When your heart knows enough fear, it changes you. That’s the only reason I don’t see my dad in the mirror anymore. I don’t think he was ever this scared of anything.

I’m getting away from myself.

  


I don’t… I don’t know how much you want to know, or even how much I should tell you. I probably already told you too much, didn’t I? I don’t know how to talk about stuff like this.

  


But I want to talk about it. I keep feeling like I’m going crazy, like I’m pretending and this is all just in my head, but I remember so clearly how it felt to have him standing there. He’s so strong, he always was but he’s so much stronger now and that one arm feels cold and heavy no matter how he wrapped it around me. We were kissing. I took his face in my hands and I think I might have been crying, I don’t know, because it all happened so fast. We were kissing, and then we were on the bed and he was pressed against me and clothes were coming off… I always thought about it. I had always thought about him that way, always wanted him before I could even begin to put together a way to categorize it or think about it, before I ever knew how sex with two men would work. I used to…

  


Jesus, I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can say this. I know I’m supposed to tell you everything, I know you already know it but it’s so different when it’s coming out of your mouth, you know? Of course you know. Shoot, I’m sorry.

  


…I used to think of him when I was, y’know… indisposed. I panicked a little about it when I was really young, like when I first figured out how to do it, but you slather enough denial on top of anything, it’ll drown it out. I didn’t even really know what I was trying to imagine, just thought about his face, his lips, how much I loved it when he slung his arm around my shoulders. How much I loved sleeping next to him, even if there wasn’t a hint of anything untoward happening. I just always wanted to be near him. I thought maybe that was something all boys did, just nobody talked about it.

  


Things are so different now, do you know that? You guys don’t know how good you’ve got it. Well, not _you_ guys specifically, I mean… it’s still not great. It’s not as great as people told me it was. That stuff is still out there, but… it’s so different now.

  


Yeah, I’m stalling. I’m sorry. I’m just embarrassed to talk about it like this.

  


But it was like he remembered something from a long, long time ago because there wasn’t an ounce of hesitation in him. If we’re being honest, which I’m trying to, I don’t know if this was the first time he did this with a man. He was… well, pretty well coordinated. Then again, I guess I was too, all things considered. I try not to think about what might have been done to him in the time he’s been gone – if I do, it shuts me down and I can’t think about anything else, and I’ve got way too much to do. Still, there wasn’t a lot of space for awkwardness or patience, not that first night. There’ve been other nights where we spent hours just, I dunno… trying things. Communicating without words. I always thought that was mumbo-jumbo from Sam, how important non-verbal communication can be, but I don’t know if there’s a better example of where it’s important than the bedroom.

  


It’s all a blur, but I remember the way his skin felt against mine. I remember running my hands over so many scars, so many bumps of old, dead flesh laced over his back and his arm, especially over near his shoulder. That metal monstrosity is so seamless, eats right into part of his chest and shoulder and it makes me want to vomit when I think about how deep it’s anchored into him to be that strong. He felt smaller than I remembered, all tight corded muscle and wound into one walking tension knot, but maybe that’s because I’m so much bigger than I was in most of my memories with him before the war. That was the only time I saw him slow down, when he paused to take stock of this bigger me when there weren’t clothes in the way, like he wasn’t sure I was even myself anymore. But I made him look me in the eyes, and there was no more hesitating. He was against me, we were…

  


Sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t think I can say that out loud. Not yet. I can’t say what we did but I can tell you how it felt.

  


It felt like nothing more natural had ever happened to me in my life. It felt like the noise outside of my apartment was gone, the world had quieted down into nothing, and nothing else mattered. My whole world went into a focus narrowed down into how it felt to have my hand wrapped around him, his hand wrapped around me, all that moving and the push and pull and –

  


…damn. Just, damn.

  


He left me there, just like that. I don’t think either one of us was finished more than ten seconds before he was up, pulling clothes back on while I tried to catch my breath. He was all over my stomach, I was all over his hand, but he was half-dressed and jumping into the window frame by the time I found my legs and stood up. I called his name. I remember my voice breaking – I had been so much louder than I ever remember being with anyone else – and I remember him glancing back, but only for a second.

  


He only looked back at me for a second, and then he was gone again.

  


I stuck my head out and there he was, running down the sidewalk.

  


I wish I could tell you why I didn’t chase him. The only thing I can think is that on some level I knew that if I scared him he might not come back. Maybe I was just too emotionally drained. Sam has term for that, I just always forget what it is. I come from a time when men were ‘men’ and didn’t talk to therapists about their problems. I also come from a time when men routinely beat the hell out of women with a lot less social backlash than they get now and generally weren’t that great to each other, too. I try not to romanticize.

  


I’m not ashamed of the fact that I cried. I think I earned that cry. I think maybe I earned a lot of cries I still haven’t taken. Don’t know if I ever will… it’s a hard thing for me to do.

  


But he came back. Not the next night – and I don’t think I slept more than five minutes at a time all night, woke up every single time a floorboard creaked or a car went by two stories below – or the night after, but he came back, and it was magic all over again.

  


Every time he leaves it’s like I’m biting my own tongue off trying not to beg him to stay. He hasn’t, yet, but he fell asleep beside me last night for a few hours and it was like someone let all the air back into my lungs. My arm went numb under his neck and I didn’t move once, terrified of waking him and sending him back out that window into whatever world it is he inhabits when he’s not with me. I half love that window because it’s how he comes back to me and I half want to brick the goddamn thing up because it’s how he leaves.

  


This is miserable.

  


I have to keep finding reasons why we can’t leave the country. I have to make up new leads. I lie to Sam all the time now, which is probably the second worst feeling in the world but this is how desperate I’ve gotten. This is how far down I’ve fallen. I don’t think I can keep up the charade but I’m so scared that if I try to lock him in or refuse to let him go he’ll panic and I’ll never see him again. I want to give him his space but who the hell am I kidding, he’s not well enough to be out there on his own. This world is horrifying and strange to people like us. He didn’t even know his own name when I found him, there have to be so many questions he needs answers to and if we can just sit down then maybe he-

  


…shit, I’m sorry, I’m doing it again. Need to take a breath.

  


I’m so sorry for laying all of this at your feet, but you were the only one who I knew would understand. You’re the only one who really gets what it means to be stuck like this.

  


Thank you, Wanda. I do feel a little bit better, I think.


End file.
